Page:Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile - In the Years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772, and 1773 volume 2.djvu/648

632 king in five days marching from Gidara came to a station of the Daveina, which is a tribe of shepherds, by much the strongest of any in Atbara. He fell into their encampments a little before the dawn of day. The first shew they made was that of resistance, till they had got their horses and camels saddled; they then all fled, after the king had killed three of them with his own hand. Ras Woodage signalized himself likewise by having slain the same number with the king. The cattle, women, and provisions fell all into the king's hand, and were driven off to Gondar. Their arrival gave the town an entertainment to which they had a long time been strangers. Many thousand camels were assembled in the plain, where stands the palace of Kahha, (upon a river of that name) large flocks of horned cattle, of extraordinary beauty, were also brought from Atbara, which the king ordered to be distributed among his soldiers, and the priests of Gondar, and such of the officers of state as had been necessarily detained on account of the police, and had not followed the army.

year, 1736, there happened a total eclipse of the sun which very much affected the minds of the weaker sort of people. The dreamers and the prophets were everywhere let loose, full of the lying spirit which possessed them, to foretel that the death of the king, and the downfal of his government were at hand, and deluges of civil blood were then speedily to be spilt both in the capital and provinces. There was not, indeed, at the time any circumstance that warranted such a prediction, or any thing likely to be more fatal to the state, than the expenditure of the large sums of money that the turn the king had taken subjected him to.